


(You've Given Me) The Greatest Faith

by fictionalfaerie



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Ficlets, Inspired by Welcome to Night Vale, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 14:20:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20909057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalfaerie/pseuds/fictionalfaerie
Summary: I'm attempting to write a snippet of a ficlet each day in October- my goal is 250 words per day.These are all slices of much larger fics that may or may not be written one day.Aiming to update every Wednesday & Saturday.





	1. The Radio

**Author's Note:**

> Thus far, all of these belong to one 'verse that is definitely being expanded upon with my upcoming Eat The Rude Big Bang Challenge entry.  
The general concept of that 'verse is that Will Graham has Night Vale origins, and as such is a bit otherworldly in ways that he tries to hide as other people don't quite understand.  
All you need to know about Night Vale in order to understand the 'verse in general is that Night Vale is an eerie and mysterious small desert town that doesn’t follow any of the normal rules of our world. 
> 
> These ficlets all focus on Hannibal, who doesn't quite understand Will, either, but very much wants to.  
**These ficlets are NOT canon to my 'verse, merely exercises to help me get a feel for it, just a heads up. **
> 
> A great deal of thanks to my Nikki, Caleb, and Emily for putting up with my random caps lock yelling and helping me when my words get wrapped around themselves.  
These ficlets are not beta'd, apologies. If you see a huge glaring issue, feel free to let me know and I'll happily remedy it.  
Title from "Hold On" by Empires.

The door is unlocked, unsurprisingly. Hannibal eases it open as quietly and carefully as is possible, given the state of the door, hoping to slide into the house without disturbing any of its inhabitants. 

He’s relatively successful- the only one who comes to greet him is Winston. He walks up, nudging his nose against one of Hannibal’s hands, and then sits patiently at his feet. Hannibal holds both hands out, letting the dog snuffle at it, and tells him quietly, “Nothing to share today, I’m afraid.” 

Winston accepts this, thumping his tail against the floor once, twice, and then gets up to walk away. Hannibal follows him, treading lightly behind him towards the living room. It’s quite unusual to enter this home with such a small amount of fanfare from its occupants, late hour or not. It stirs an interesting emotion within him, this easy dismissal as ‘safe’ or ‘familiar’, an emotion he sets aside for later dissection. 

Hannibal cannot help the small smile as he enters the living room and takes in the scene. Will is draped awkwardly across the couch, half covered with a blanket. A forgotten glass of whiskey sits half empty on the table near him, water seeping its way slowly toward the coaster beside it. A dog is curled against either side of him, while the others are sprawled around the room’s floor. 

A few heads raise in interest as he enters the room, but none bother to get up and greet him, and all settle back in as Winstron flops gracelessly in the middle of them. 

The whiskey, when he picks it up and sniffs, is low quality. He frowns at it and resolves to replace the various bottles in the house soon. He sets it on the coaster it rested beside in the first place but makes no move to clean up the condensation it has left. 

He moves slowly around the room, aware of a couple of pairs of eyes tracking him, certain that this lazy spell will hold and keep them from taking further interest. 

His fingers run lightly over half-finished flies, along the book that’s open beside them, against the radio laying on its side. As he touches it, the radio spits a burst of static before humming to life and letting a sonorous voice drift out. Before he can turn it off, or even down, the words catch his attention. 

“-five dollars, five whole American dollars, dear listeners, if you can even believe tha--- oh, hello there. It seems, dear audience, that we have a new listened. And not our normal audience, are you, sir? Lurking about our airwaves just as you’re lurking around our friends’ houses. The monster under the bed, clawing his way out and into the daylight. Do be careful with this newcomer, listeners.” 

Hannibal huffs a small laugh, wondering at the odd programs Will has chosen to listen to. He certainly wouldn’t have pegged him as someone who listened to serials. 

The laugh dies, though, as the voice continues to talk, “He comes into your house and he judges your drinks, sifts through your things- never realizing just how closely he is flirting with disasters that he cannot even fathom the size of, can he? How foolish, to think that he’s the creature in the dark, the thing that you should fear.” 

The frown pulls at his face without permission and he feels every hair on his neck stand up, although he’s not sure if it’s the words getting to him or the way the temperature in the room seems to have dropped. He feels something rising up behind him, looming, and the words are lost in the sudden release of adrenaline. 

Carefully, quietly, he turns. 

He does not jump, although it is a close thing, when he finds himself face to face with a sleep muddled Will. Will leans in close, reaching around him to clumsily hit the switch on the radio. 

“Sorry,” Will mumbles, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with one hand, pulling the other back to him slowly. He moves to step away from Hannibal, but Hannibal moves with him, keeping himself in Will’s personal space. “Must not’ve heard you come in over the radio.” 

“I was quiet. I had hoped you would be sleeping after the day you had,” Hannibal responds, moving forward even more, pressing closer. “I didn’t want to disturb you.” 

Will blinks at him sleepily, nodding after a beat or two. 

“An interesting program you were listening to,” Hannibal continues, not asking about it but letting the curiosity hang between them. He runs a hand through the curls sticking out awkwardly. 

Will’s eyes dart away, focusing on something behind him, and he shrugs. His voice, when he responds, is ever so slightly tighter than normal, “Wouldn’t know. Slept through whatever it was.” 

Hannibal wonders if Will knows that his voice gives him away, if Will knows that his lie is so easily noticed. The consistent dodges around Hannibal’s questions do little to dissuade him, if anything they just pique his curiosity more. He’s patient, though. One day he’ll learn all the secrets Will guards so closely. Thus, he lets it go for the moment. 

He brings the hand not buried in Will’s hair to rest on his shoulder, “Come, let me make you dinner, Will. And then you can see yourself to an actual bed for a proper night’s sleep.” 

Will nods, letting Hannibal turn him, hesitating only long enough to allow Hannibal to close even more distance between them before finally leading the way to the kitchen.


	2. Killing Jack

Hannibal has always taken pride in his self discipline. So many people who’ve shared his extracurricular interests have met their downfall at the hands of impatience or impulsivity. Knowing that those two things would not be the cause of his own destruction has always been an important factor in his life. Even poor, lovely Miriam- the closest anyone’s ever come to catching him- wasn’t drawn in by anything he had done in particular: everyone agrees readily that she was making intuitive leaps and following every avenue she could find, hence the reason no one even considered talking to him when she went missing. His work was clean and precise and would remain that way. 

In his darker moments, however, Hannibal entertains the idea of unleashing his rage at Jack. He really cannot stand the man- dull and predictable, bumbling along clumsily and struggling against the idea that he has no control over any aspects of his life. First impressions speak loudly, and that first meeting with Jack had left a sour, hateful taste in his mouth, no matter that he pretended otherwise. 

He considers the ways he would end the man. Some days he thinks he would simply snap Jack’s neck. Quick, efficient, and easy given the way Jack stands too close too often, over familiar and dismissing personal space to intimidate people, whether a conscious decision or not. Other days, he is certain that he would give in to the urge to rip him apart. How glorious it would be to eviscerate Jack, continuing on until there was little left to even identify the man. A scalpel to the throat, a knife to the sternum, a broken chair leg to a soft underbelly… 

The display is always easy to picture: hollow out the eyes, carve the heart out of it’s cavity, leave them gaping. He would sit the man up at his desk, unseeing and unfeeling, amidst all the files on the Chesapeake Ripper. Leaving the man to be immortalized amongst his failures, forever placed alongside them himself… such a lovely appeal to it. On the days he’s filled with more frustration, he considers how he could find the other files on his own work, the ones not attributed to the Ripper, leave those alongside so that everyone would wonder and the Chesapeake Ripper could loom even larger in their minds, ever more terrifying. 

The meal is the easiest, though. 

There would be but one dinner guest- Will- and but one meat- brain. 

The thought of feeding Jack’s mind, simple and small, to Will seems a bit obvious, but he finds he cannot think of another way to prepare Jack. To take the mind which cared so little for Will and his… some seasonal vegetables, done up simplistically in a way that would be comforting to Will, reminiscent of his childhood… it’s a lovely thought. 

Yes.. Hannibal prides himself on his self discipline, but he doesn’t deny himself harmless fantasies.


	3. Change in Plans

“What if I asked you to cancel your party?” Will asks, setting his glass of wine down on the counter beside the cutting board. Hannibal puts his knife down and angles his body to look at him. 

“I would call up my guests and tell them not to come,” he responds without hesitation. 

The emotions playing over Will’s face are interesting, a mixture of disbelief and relief. He’s been asking questions like this more and more steadily since Hannibal revealed his interest in him, almost as if he’s testing Hannibal. Hannibal’s not sure what the tests are, but he’s relatively certain he’s passing them. 

Will focuses on something beside Hannibal, although his peripheral vision shows nothing beside him to catch Will’s interest, as far as he can tell- yet another thing that Will has been doing more and more of lately. Hannibal files it away to examine later, when he’s not under Will’s observation. 

“What if I didn’t want you to call them?” Will asks, just as Hannibal is moving to continue his preparations. “What if I wanted you to just wait until they arrived?” 

Hannibal abandons his work, turning to fully face Will, bringing a hand up to run along his cheek, “Then I would answer the door and tell them that there had been a change of plans. Or, should you prefer, I would simply lock the doors and leave them wondering why no one was answering.” 

Will bites his bottom lip, eyes darting alongside Hannibal, unwilling to look at him for whatever reason, and nods slowly. 

“Will,” Hannibal says, quietly, “I would not hesitate to cancel this dinner, in whichever way you deemed appropriate.” 

Will nods more, leaning forward to rest his forehead against Hannibal’s shoulder. He’s warm through Hannibal’s shirt, perhaps feverish.

“I would not hesitate to do anything you asked of me, Will,” Hannibal continues, pushing at the boundaries the two have been dancing around, refusing to speak of.

Will pulls back, catching Hannibal’s eyes, and Hannibal hopes to always remember the desire and terror mixed in them at those words. He doesn’t speak, just swallows visibly a couple of times before going back to watching whatever has caught his eye that Hannibal cannot see. 

After a few moments, Hannibal asks, “Shall I call them, Will? Or lock the doors?” 

Will shakes his head immediately, “No. I was just… no. No.” 

Hannibal turns back to his cutting board, finishing off the last of the garnishes, and waits until he’s certain that his voice can carry the unaffected tone he wants it to before he speaks again. “Truly, Will. Anything you request.” 

Will leans into him again, pressing a kiss to his shoulder before whispering, “Maybe you shouldn’t be.” 

Before Hannibal can answer, Will waves a hand, and Hannibal allows it to work, keeping his answer at bay. He watches Will from the corner of his eye, Will with his focus trained around Hannibal but not quite on him. After a moment, he settles, picking his wine back up and turning his attention to the cutting board.


	4. Seeing Hannibal

“I don’t perform for a crowd,” Will tells Jack, hunching his shoulders and glaring at them in response to Jack’s request for his insight. 

Jack looks around the cramped space, tilts his head toward the open door and the deluge of rain outside of it, and raises an eyebrow. Hannibal has never been more tempted to stab him than in that moment as he looks at Will as if Will is nothing more than a petulant child. 

“You aren’t performing, and almost everyone is in the office over there. It’s just us, Will,” Jack responds, “We’re all going to be focused on our own things. There’s not really anywhere else to go, Will.” 

Will sighs, clearly gearing up to argue, but after a moment he looks at Hannibal. Their eyes lock for a moment before he focuses on something to the left of Hannibal. When he finally responds to Jack, he acquiesces, telling them all to be quiet and not to watch. 

The others agree readily, turning to do their own work and give Will a semblance of privacy. Hannibal, however, catches his eyes again. He raises his chin slightly, not sure if it is defiance or apology that he has nothing else to focus on. Will rolls his eyes at him, but turns to survey the scene. 

He watches as Will steps forward, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, preparing himself for the scene before them. Hannibal is still aware of Zeller and Price beside him, quietly murmuring over the photos they’re reviewing and ignoring Will. Katz and Jack are watching Will as well, but subtly while whispering to each other. It’s easy enough to let his awareness of them fade, to focus on Will and nothing else. 

He knows it is in direct violation of Will’s requests, knows that he is in blatant defiance of Jack’s orders, but he cannot bring himself to care. 

He watches as Will brings his head up, glancing around the container with eyes that do not see them, but rather focus on the events he’s playing out in his head. He moves occasionally; there are careful steps toward the body, small movements of his arm, sharp head tilts as he focuses in on things only he can see and seems to listen to the air around them. It’s beautiful and Hannibal is entranced as he watches this aborted choreography play out. 

When he’s finished, a deep shuddering breath catches everyone’s attention. 

“Well?” Jack asks. 

Will turns to them, eyes once again finding Hannibal’s. Hannibal can feel the wildness rolling around inside of both of them, an echo chamber resonating with hope and understanding. 

For the first time in his life, Hannibal feels as though someone can see him.


	5. Seeing Hannibal, Revisited

Hannibal closes the door behind him, feeling it latch securely. 

Will stands in the center of the room, back to Hannibal. He’s trembling slightly as he takes in the scene before him. 

Hannibal wonders if he is reading it as the love note it was written as. Hannibal wonders if the shadows are telling him how much of his heart and soul he poured into this place. Hannibal wonders if there are whispers of his desperation sliding toward Will’s ears even now. 

“What do you see, Will?” Hannibal asks, moving closer to him. He stops just short of Will, aware that he is holding his breath, waiting. 

A beat of silence. Two. Three. Hannibal is about to do something- lash out or leave or scream- when Will finally speaks. 

“You.” 

The noise that tears its way out of Hannibal’s throat is not one that he can put a name to. 

Will straightens his posture, head coming up to survey all that which is before him, and Hannibal remembers this dance. He watches, entranced, as it begins. 

Will steps forward, careful to avoid the puddling blood. He is light on his feet in a way that he rarely is in his everyday life. He is sure of his movements, stepping closer and closer to the bodies before him. He kneels, then rises, steps further, kneels again. Hannibal feels like his heart is going to beat out of his chest; he has never felt like this before and he is slightly worried that he never will again. 

An arm sweeps out, almost as if it’s being pulled by some unseen hand--- perhaps it is, given the way Will had spoken about the shadows. It is a loose movement, but with a sense of control, as though he were conducting an orchestra--- perhaps he is, given the way Will had spoken about the shadows. His back muscles bunch together, the tendons in his neck stand out, and Hannibal knows that while he has spent his whole life chasing down beauty, this- this- this is the very definition of it. 

His head falls forward for a moment, chin resting against his chest. His breathing grows loud and ragged, and then he lifts it again, looking around. His eyes are far away, focusing on things Hannibal can only guess at, despite being the author of this place. He cocks his head, as though listening to someone speak to him, huffing a breathless laugh in response. Tears well up in Will’s eyes, but he blinks them back, turning to listen to something else, to someone else. 

As with the last time Hannibal witnessed this, he takes a deep shuddering breath, clearly finished. He turns, eyes finding Hannibal. 

Hannibal steps toward him, “What did they tell you, Will?” 

Will doesn’t answer, instead focusing on something beside Hannibal- his shadows, he knows now. He watches them (presumably) for a moment before refocusing on Hannibal. 

“I love you, too, you know,” he whispers.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've any desire to see specific prompts in this 'verse, feel free to toss them at me.  
Tumblr: FictionalFaerie (I use it rarely, but do get notifications in email from it) / Twitter: faerieishee


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